The field of the present invention is specialty confetti.
Confetti has traditionally been created from scrap paper such as small round circles from the manufacture of spiral or three-hole punch notebooks or other waste material. Confetti may also be made quickly in large quantities by a method of cutting several sheets of tissue paper with a straight edge cutter. Confetti having a specific design has been made by a method of die cutting sheets of tissue paper as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,911,805 issued to Sterr, et al., which is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.
The disadvantages of traditional confetti and its method of manufacture are numerous. First, the use of paper scraps such as circles or irregular shapes limit design variations. As scraps are not intended to be confetti, they are typically either a standard geometric shape (circle, square, rectangle, etc.) or a completely irregular unidentifiable shape. Second, as paper or tissue scraps are not the intended product, the confetti must be collected from the waste of the manufacture of other goods. Such a method of manufacture is time consuming and inefficient for rapid mass production of a specific design of confetti. Third, as traditional confetti is made from paper or tissue, once wet, the confetti may clump and become difficult to pick up. Wet tissue paper confetti can also clog drainage systems. Fourth, once paper tissue confetti is tossed and settles to the ground, the confetti's utility extinguishes and is transformed to refuse. Therefore, the useful life of confetti is short.
Confetti manufactured by the use of a straight edge paper cutter reduces the amount of effort involved in collecting and packaging confetti compared to creating confetti made from waste scraps. However, the use of a straight edge paper cutter limits the shapes of the various possible confetti designs to geometric shapes composed of straight lines such as triangles, rectangles, squares and other tetragonal shapes.
Tissue paper confetti manufactured using a die can produce designs having straight lines and/or curves, and therefore increases possible confetti design options available compared to using the straight edge paper cutter method. However, close ended die cutting on tissue paper results in individual pieces of confetti fusing or sticking to each other. Although the amount of fusing is substantially reduced using an open ended die as compared to a close ended die, the use of an open ended die still requires an operator to burst or fluff the edges of a confetti stack after the die cutting operation to separate each piece of confetti. Additionally, the severity of fusing increases where the confetti design has a sharp point or an abrupt change in the profile with a small fillet or outside radius. Therefore, to maximize efficiency and minimize bursting of confetti stacks, design options for die cutting tissue paper are often limited to designs having gradual changes in the profile contour or large fillet or outside radius and lack sharp points along the design profile.